Karaoke nights at Seventh Heaven
by Borgias
Summary: A dark, disjointed oneshot describing the psychology of Sephiroth after he found and read the notebooks in the ShinRa Mansion in Nibelheim. Rated M for language and in-game slurs.
1. Lucrecia, My Reflection

Disclaimer: I don't own Reno, the Turks, Midgar or its slums, only my OC.

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Everyone mulled around Tifa's Seventh Heaven, waiting for the show to start. It had been Cam's idea to have a weekly karaoke event, since she remembered it had been something fun to do at the bars she'd worked in. Using her own expertise in the matter, as well as the help of a few technically savvy patrons, she'd been able to set up some flashy lights, and a projector with a background behind the small stage area, to display images while people sang.

So far, the winner would be chosen by the audience's applause. The winner got 2 free drinks as a prize. The first event had been a week ago, and it had been such a rousing success that Tifa was holding a special session tonight, friends only. Marlene had opened the show, singing a shy version of a lovely old ballad that had Barret nearly in tears, hollering "That's my kid! So much fuckin' talent!"

Now, the lights dimmed as the next friend was set to take the stage. Everyone looked around to see who it would be. Tifa mentally checked, thinking "Not Yuffie, she's over there . . . Reno! No, he's at the bar getting another round for the Turks, and all of them are there . . . Who is it, then?". Up on the stage, a baleful red light turned on and shone, and everyone gave a collective gasp as Vincent Valentine walked up on stage, the first chords of a song ringing out of the amplifiers.

On the projected background, the doomed floating city of Midgar could be seen, a shot taken from an aerial view, as if from a chopper. Everyone felt a bit nostalgic; it may have been corrupt and polluted, but most of them had called it home not so long ago. Valentine took a deep breath and began singing "I hear the roar of a big machine, Two worlds and in between, Hot metal and methedrine, I hear empire down, I hear empire down".

He had a pleasant voice, a husky, breathy sort of voice that seemed melancholy. The scene behind him had begun to change while he sang, and now showed Vincent as he'd been before as a Turk, stuck in the laboratory capsule where he'd been transformed into what he was now. "I hear the roar of a big machine, Two worlds and in between" he sang, and the scene changed.

Now it was Valentine in action as a Turk, leaping sideways and shooting his gun at enemies "Love lost, fire at will, Dum-dum bullets and shoot to kill, I hear Dive, bombers and, Empire down," a shot of Midgar as it was now, a ruin, on the screen "Empire down". Tifa looked around the bar, but Valentine was for now the sole center of attention. Everyone sight was fixed on him, and now the music picked up.

The lights switched to a different mode, the light beams arcing over Valentine as he tossed back his cape and gripped the microphone in his clawed hand "I hear the sons of the city and dispossessed, Get down, get undressed, Get pretty but you and me," and the background that had been previously showing pictures of Rufus ShinRa and a few of the executives, now showed pictures of Lucrecia, the woman everyone knew Valentine had pined for.

Interspersed among her pictures were images of Valentine as Chaos, of a pregnant Lucrecia, of Sephiroth as he'd been in better times, "We got the kingdom, we got the key, We got the empire, now as then, We don't doubt, we don't take direction, Lucretia, my reflection, dance the ghost with me" Valentine sang, reaching out with his normal hand as if to stroke Lucrecia's face.

There was now a break in the lyrics, the music taking over as it became more guitar-oriented. A few of the guys cheered quietly, surprised that the normally taciturn ex-Turk was giving such a good performance. Tifa, meanwhile, saw Yuffie grinning broadly as she kept the music's beat by tapping her foot. "Did you know about this?" Tifa asked, and the mischievous gleam in the young ninja's eyes told Tifa she was right. Yuffie nodded "Yup, I talked him into it, helped fix the picture slideshow, heck, I even coached the guy . . . shut up, he's about to begin again!"

Valentine took another deep breath as the lyrics again took precedence. "We look hard, We look through, We look hard to see for real" he sang, and the screen showed Lucrecia doing her research on the laboratory computer, and a few pictures Yuffie had taken when they first found the grotto where the likeness of Lucrecia could be seen in a giant crystal. In one of the pictures, Valentine was with his back to the camera as he peered into the grotto, a troubled expression on his face.

However, the scenes now changed to Valentine in his various forms. Death Gigas, Hellmasker, the Galian Beast, and even the most terrible of his forms, Chaos, flashed across the screen as Valentine sang on "Such things I hear, they don't make sense, I don't see much evidence, I don't feel, I don't feel, I don't Feel . . ."

The views on screen now were of the ShinRa Tower, where some of the world's most powerful, and evil, people made the decisions that helped shape and doom their world. "A long train held up by page on page, A hard reign held up by rage" , and the coldly handsome face of Rufus ShinRa that had stared at them from the screen was now replaced by scenes of the destroyed Midgar, Junon Harbor, and Mideel after the WEAPON attack "Once a railroad, Now it's done . . . "

Now Vincent's rapt audience was taken back to the start, as the screen presented them with shots of the Midgar Plate, and of the Sister Ray as it charged to shoot at the Diamond WEAPON "I hear the roar of a big machine, Two worlds and in between, Hot metal and methedrine, I hear empire down . . ." Finally, several different shots, a mix or a recap of everything previously shown, and everyone silently took in the pictures of the WEAPONs, of Sephiroth, of ShinRa Tower, the Sister Ray, the Junon Military Airbase, Meteor, the Deepground facility, Chaos and Omega and several other images, all in quick succession.

"We got the empire, now as then, We don't doubt, we don't take reflection, Lucretia, my direction, dance the ghost with me . . . " Valentine ended, and he stepped back from the light, his pale face seeming to hang suspended in the darkness as the music took over and the picture slideshow sped up as the song neared its end.

When the song finally ended, the lights were turned back on as everyone cheered wildly. Onstage, Valentine raised a hand in acknowledgement of his appreciative audience, a small smile playing on his lips. He bowed his head to them, and stepped off the stage. He was immediately accosted by Yuffie, who leaped at him. He caught her in midair, and she gave a small yelp when his clawed hand dug into her side.

Valentine readjusted his grip so he wouldn't hurt her as she exuberantly cheered "You did it, Vince! I knew you could, didn't I say so?" Valentine nodded "Thanks, Yuffie", and then he impulsively did something that surprised everyone, but none more than Yuffie and Valentine themselves: he kissed the corner of her mouth warmly, cupping her face between his hands. Yuffie went stiff in his arms, and blushed furiously once they'd broken apart.

Valentine smiled softly and turned his back on the girl, heading towards the bar. Yuffie placed her cold palms on her hot cheeks, and smiled also. Everyone had wisely stopped staring, glad that Valentine had made such progress. He'd seemed like such a troubled, jaded man when they first met him, but now it seemed he had managed to put the ghosts of his past behind him, and was finally ready to move on.

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A/N Valentine is a very special character to me. As much as I feel I can relate to some of his feelings of loneliness sometimes, I find him a maddeningly difficult character to write. I hope I did him justice. If not, well . . . You know what to do. The idea for the karaoke came from another writer here, Lady Manson (I pity the fool who don't check her stuff out!), who wrote a couple of fics involving some of the FFVII cast members doing exactly that, singing karaoke.

The song I had Valentine sing is called Lucretia (My Reflection), and it was originally created by Kreator. I was listening to it with my younger brother one day, and we thought it suited Valentine's aura of loneliness, melancholy, and "gothiness", as my brother so succinctly summed it up. The song's been covered a bunch of times, but the version I was using to model Valentine's voice and the music it was accompanied with was the version done by Alkaline Trio.

If you get a chance to listen to that particular version of the song, you'll see what I mean. Anyways, I'm gonna end this rather long-winded A/N by explaining a few things: I'm obviously a fan of Yuffentine fics (when done correctly). However, my fics will always be decidedly Reno-centric. If you noticed, one of my OCs, Cam, made a cameo appearance at the beginning of the story. She'll be Reno's love interest in my fics.

Now . . . Reviews, please! Whoever leaves a review will receive an imaginary plush, and you can choose if you want a moogle plushie, or a chocobo plushie. Cheers!


	2. Aviary

Disclaimer: I don't own Reno, the Turks, ShinRa Electric Company or its executives, Midgar or its slums, only my OCs. And neither do I own the song "Aviary". That belongs to Ego Likeness.

Tiny A/N:

This isn't really a songfic like the previous one. I guess that I won't stick to a series-type of format, and just post any song-related drabble here.

And it's Miyuki's turn! I like her, and the song I chose for her is called "Aviary", by Ego Likeness, like I said above.

And as always, (though very few of you ever do so):

Read and Review!

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Miyuki was smoking out in the small, open-air terrace provided for cigarette breaks. She let the rich, heavy cigarette smoke float from out her mouth. She looked through the glass window at the ShinRa Company executives, saw Palmer complaining to whoever paid him attention about the low budget his Department was issued. 

"_In come the vultures  
thru dusty air  
to take you down  
and tear the ribbons from your hair_," Miyuki thought, marveling at their greed. Did they ever sit and think that, every time they argued and bitched about low budgets, people below-Plate were going hungry? Kids were being made to work, kids who'd never even seen a beautiful, sunny day.

Now Miyuki could see them in her mind's eye, remembering them from the times she'd gone to the Midgar slums, to the lower Junon Village. To her own beloved Wutai, still struggling after ShinRa destroyed it. The children begged for alms, or simply walked aimlessly around, looking for something, anything to make things better.

"_In come the songbirds  
with bitter melodies  
to sever all your heart strings  
as they light upon the trees_,"

She sighed, thinking of her own younger brother and sister, the last time she'd seen them. They had been a poor, but mostly happy family. Then she'd started sniping, becoming a mercenary. The bounties she collected and brought home had made things better for them.

The last time she'd seen them, she'd snuck out of guarding Vice-President Rufus ShinRa after he'd gone to bed. She risked her life to see her family, and they wouldn't acknowledge her, claiming she was dead to them for having betrayed her country so shamefully. She'd thought they might be happy to know she was alive and well, even if she was serving her former enemies.

She'd thought wrong. Miyuki clenched her jaw, the pain of her rejection still fresh in her mind, musing, "_This place can sometimes be so ugly, this place can sometimes be so strange._"

So she'd gone back to ShinRa Company, and the Turks, any plans of reconciliation with her family dashed to pieces.

Miyuki tossed her cigarette and went into the building, to the floor known as the 'Turk floor'. She looked around, saw Reno, Tseng, Rude and a few of the other come out of the Turk lounge. Miyuki glanced at their black uniforms, knowing that, as much as it hurt, she had a new family now.

"_In come the blackbirds  
in murders and in droves  
to cover you in shadow  
as they clean you to the bone,_" she thought, wondering why Tseng, who was Wutaian like her, was so different from her. She always ended up frustrating him, angering him. He had, she remembered, made it a point to congratulate her on the Wutai New Year, then reprimanded her when she blew up firecrackers in the Turk lounge.

She always felt like a foreigner here.

She wondered why Reno acted as if he was such a comic buffoon all the time, when she could tell he had a secret ache. It was in the way he looked up expectantly when his PHS rang, and it was in the frustrated look on his face when he had to work overtime and couldn't get out of ShinRa Tower for days at a time.

Personally, she thought he had someone waiting for him on the outside.

She wondered why Rude was so quiet, all the time, and wondered why he always wore shades. His eyes were beautiful. She remembered them clearly from one memorable occasion when, having finished a tough assignment in Junon, she, Reno and Rude had drunk much more than their share, and Miyuki had woken up in Rude's room.

She and Reno teased Rude mercilessly for weeks.

Miyuki went into her own room in the ShinRa Living Quarters. She caught a glimpse of herself on the mirror over the bathroom sink. Reno had left the door open again, damn him to hell.

She looked at herself, and sighed, aware of all she'd been through to get to where she was now. She remembered her breakdown in Gongaga a few weeks earlier, how desolate she'd felt. But not today. Today she felt better. She thought,

"_And here I come a firebird  
don't offer up your sorrow  
today you see me crash and burn  
but I'll be back tomorrow,_"

Miyuki grinned to herself, peeling off her Turk jacket, kicking off her shoes. Her toes sank into the plush carpeting ShinRa splurged on for its employees. A plush, beautiful prison, really, as Turks weren't allowed to retire.

She pulled off her tie, tossed it away. She didn't care where it landed. Under her breath, she whispered,

"_This place can sometimes be so perfect  
This place can sometimes be your cage,_"

Miyuki often felt as if she didn't really belong to this world. She'd never fit in, either in Wutai, or here. She'd never known love, never let anyone close enough, though she did feel a strong sense of kinship with her Turk companions.

Still, for all the losses and heartbreak she'd withstood, all the uncertainties she'd known, all the anger and pain she'd caused, she realized she liked being alive.

She went to the window Reno had also left open. The wind coming through the window had scattered papers all over the room. She vowed to successfully housebreak the damned redhead.

A heady wind ruffled her hair, and Miyuki looked out at the city of Midgar.

"_This place can some times be so beautiful  
_

_ This place will always be so strange," _she thought, letting out a satisfied breath as she closed the window and set about organizing the papers the wind had scattered.

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A/N: There you go! Hope you liked it. 

If you haven't yet read my big fic, "Dreams Cloaked in Shadows", the incident Miyuki remembers as her latest emotional breakdown happened in the 'Confessions' chapter. It's one of the last ones there. The incident where she and the boys get drunk and she jumps Rude's bones is a memory of hers, not a particular chapter I've written.

If you're a Miyuki fan, then I hope you enjoyed the more in-depth look into her psyche, how she views the world, her past, that sort of thing.

If there's anything at all, comments, suggestions, anything, please be kind enough to leave a review. That's how crappy writers get better, you know. Anything helps. Except flames.

Bye then!


	3. Get Stoned

Disclaimer: I don't own Reno, the Turks, Midgar, the slums, ShinRa Electric Power Company or its executives. Those all belong to Square Enix. The translations from the Before Crisis handheld game belong to Dark Angel over at the Gunshot Romance webpage. What does belong to me are my Original Characters, Camryn and Miyuki, and the story itself.

Song and Lyrics: "Get Stoned" by Hinder

Pre-story A/N: Hey guys! I hope you're all enjoying those holidays.

So, here's another song-fic like Miyuki's, not particularly tied to the main story, just adding some dimension to it. Actually, this chapter is a sort of anachronism, as it takes place when the Reno and Camryn are maybe 15, 16. They're still in the slum, and Brendan's not even being thought of at the time. It's actually several months after the "Pain" chapter in the main story.

Also, and this really needs no saying but it has to be here anyway:

I am not condoning or encouraging adolescent sex, or alcohol and drug use. It's just a story, for fun and not advice.

Read and Review!!

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"Just hear me out," Camryn said, wanting Reno to know all she wanted to tell him, all she felt. She looked at his beloved face, his tired-seeming eyes, thinking "_If it's not perfect I'll perfect it till my heart explodes_."

Reno sighed and looked at her, "OK. I'll listen. What is it you wanted to tell me?" Camryn smiled tentatively. She still remembered how he'd yelled and argued with her the previous day. It was a misunderstanding. It always was. The real thing was how they always managed to get on each other's nerves so quickly.

Ashe had soured their friendship, as the older man made lewd remarks about having abused Camryn, only to goad and provoke Reno, who then became sharp with her, unfairly thinking that maybe because of her he was having such a hard time in the gang.

Reno saw her narrow her eyes slightly, wondering what she was thinking.

"I highly doubt I can make it through another of your episodes," Camryn said, eyes downcast. Reno scoffed, but Camryn continued, ". . . Lashing out," while continuing that thought, " _One__ of the petty moves you pull before you lose control_ . . ." Reno frowned, not wanting to see the truth in what she said. She could never understand he only argued and fought with her because he cared about her, enough to make him piss off his superiors.

He heard her whisper, "You wear me out . . . But it's all right now." Reno smiled and nodded, "Let's go home and get stoned."

She gave him a look that was equal parts amusement and annoyance. Reno smirked and shrugged, "We could end up making love instead of misery." Camryn began to smile, but she repeated, "Go home and get stoned . . .", a lilt in her voice, a small hitch in her eyebrow.

Again he shrugged, " 'Cause the sex is so much better when you're mad at me."

Again Camryn whispered, "You wear me out," thinking, "_We could end u__p making love instead of misery_ . . ." Reno took her hand lightly, cautiously. He knew Camryn's temper was almost as volatile as his was. He tilted his head and looked kindly at her, "But it's all right now," feeling relieved and happy that he'd made her smile.

The next morning, Reno woke up and got out of bed without waking her. Looking back at her sleeping, nude form, he sighed, running a hand through his messy red hair and thinking, "Without _a doubt__, t__he break up is worth the make up sex you're givin__g__ me_ . . ."Still, she woke up. Camryn sat up, unselfconsciously revealing her chest. She frowned at him, the way he was looking at her, a crease on his brow and an unreadable expression on his face.

Reno pulled on his boxers, and took her nightshirt and tossed it at her lightly. He knew as well as she did that things were still tense and tight between them. Sex had been fun, as it almost usually was between them, but it wasn't enough. Camryn slipped the long nightshirt over her head and stepped out of bed, sighing as she pulled on a pair of panties.

She heard him let out a breath and say, "Let's hash it out." Camryn pushed her hair out of her face, wondering just what was Reno's obsession to piss her off, and why was she so helpless against him? Reno misinterpreted her sour look of annoyance with one of defiance, and he challenged her, " 'Cause your bitching and your yelling don't mean anything."

Camryn whispered under her breath, something quick and bitter. Personally, Reno thought it was an "Oh, fuck you," she'd muttered. Reno's jaw clenched at the animosity in her tone, and the hurt in it as well. He gestured with his hands, "Don't count me out! I can handle all the baggage that you're carrying."

She looked away from him. Out the window, at the rumpled bed, at the pot they'd used last night, anywhere but at him, because if she looked at him, she had no idea what she'd do. Camryn was thinking maybe she'd kill Reno, or throw him down and fuck him, or actually fuck him and then kill him, when she heard him whisper, "You wear me out . . ."

Camryn heard the heartfelt plea for forgiveness in those simple little words. She knew he really wanted the best for her, that he often acted out on an impulse to do something right for her, but why did he have to be so maddening? Camryn was the one to lightly take his hand, stroking his knuckles with her thumb, those knuckles he'd scraped and abraded over multiple fights and scuffles, many of them for her own self.

She smiled at him, forgiving him his last argument with her in an instant, "But it's all right now . . ." Reno arched an eyebrow as she suggested, "Let's go home and get stoned." Reno smiled back at her, nodding, "We could end up making love instead of misery . . . Go home and get stoned," while thinking how that seemed to be the solution to most of their fights lately.

Camryn snickered as she acknowledged, " 'Cause the sex is so much better when you're mad at me . . ." while thinking that things would turn around for them, that things couldn't possibly get much more complicated for them.

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A/N: I have no idea where this came from. A friend of mine lent me the CD, and while I didn't like all of it, I just heard this song and thought of DCiS. Anyway, let me know what you think. 


	4. One Hundred Years

Disclaimer: ShinRa Company, its executives, the Turks, Sephiroth, Zack Fair, and all other characters (except Miyuki and Cam; those ladies are mine!) belong to Square Enix. The lyrics and music to the song "One Hundred Years" belongs to Robert Smith and the band The Cure.

Warnings: This songfic includes foul language, descriptions of physical violence, and a few incidents of in-game racism. I'm exploring the psyche of someone who went to war, and regardless of what people might say, those images stay with you. No matter who you are.

A/N: For this songfic, I chose to explore the psychology of everyone's favorite bad guy, Sephiroth! It wasn't easy. In fact, it was tiring, depressing. It made me feel bad, in some parts, but I felt compelled to write it, get it out of my system, so to speak. Funny how a story can take over your life, and instead take a life of its own.

One thing to note, the fic itself doesn't follow a precise timeline, but is rather a jumble of thoughts and images flashing in Sephiroth's mind. There are things we are all familiar with, from the game, but there are also several things I added to give him a bit more dimension, to let the readers see that there is more to him than what little we saw of him in both the original game and the movie. I don't know what Sephiroth's like in Crisis Core, but it was after the Wutai war, which is some of what I described in the fic. I don't really know where this came from, but part of it is that I heard the song, and I just found so much in it that could fit to him. Lastly, it really helps if you hear the song. The whining, screeching guitars at the end really do sound like madness. The way I put it, the song lyrics are the _text in italics_ in the story. So, anyways, here goes!

Read and Review!!

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"One Hundred Years"

The book made a hollow thud as it fell to the dusty floor, a thud as hollow and resounding as his body felt, his mind felt, after knowing all he knew now. All that had been kept from him. The filthy, lying fuckers.

"_It doesn't matter if we all die_," he thought, his mind in a whirl, suddenly focusing on the ShinRas, the father and son team that embodied the new world order. Both men; _Ambition in the back of a black car_.

His mind flashed to the Tower, that awesome, lonely Tower where he'd spent his entire early life, never knowing the world outside until he could finally fend for himself, and even though that moment came fairly early in his life, it was still many years where all Sephiroth knew was the long hallways and cold corridors of the Company. _In a high building there is so much to do_ and indeed there was. Scientists and doctors, laboratories, classrooms, training rooms, bars, recreational areas, restaurants, government offices, residential areas, thousands of employment positions, all a person needed to survive could be found in the Tower.

And Sephiroth knew of people who spent months at a time never going out into the world, breathing only the canned air, hearing only each other's voices, people like the Turks, who went out often but only to kill, only to spy, and then they came back, sometimes because they were wanting to come back, other times because they were called back. They all pretended they had free time, days off, but it was an illusion, as anyone who worked for the Company had a professional PHS, that they had to answer at any time it rang and respond to it, at the cost of their jobs, or if a SOLDIER or Turk, your life. "_Going-__home time__, a__ story on the radio_. . ."

His tortured mind gave another sickening lurch inside his head as he remembered past times, better times, times spent in the company of someone nobody knew of, "_Something small falls out of your mouth, and we laugh_," back in a time when he shared with others, when he felt laughter, and compassion, and that laughter, in retrospect, seemed, "_A prayer for something better__A__ prayer__ f__or something better_," and he sobbed now, only he didn't know he was crying, wouldn't have cared to define what exactly he was crying for. The lies? The cruelty of deception? His life that he knew was lost to him from this day forward? It felt like a gulf of one hundred years separated him from that life, a hundred-year span between the time he;d laughed and loved to the time he'd hated everything and everyone. One hundred years.

He'd never truly felt part of things, never completely included into things, and now, now he knew why. In his mind, the thought reverberated, screamed, begged, insisted, "_Please love me_!" and right on the heels of that, hatred rose like black bile, hatred to all who lied to him, through effort or through omission, it mattered little, and he hated his absentee family, or what he once thought of as his absentee family, but they weren't quite his family, were they now, and the thought changed to, "_Meet my mother_," that thing described in these books as near-celestial, as having descended from the heavens only to be put in the reactor here, covered up by the Turks, those sneaky, lying bastards.

_**But the fear takes **__**hold**_, and Sephiroth felt paranoid, anxious. They wanted this information under wraps, right? That was why it was hidden in this moldy mansion. But why then had they sent him? Did someone intend for him to find the truth of his heritage? Or was it as he suspected, and it was just a random accident? He wasn't very much a fan of the random, of the arbitrary accidents people often blamed their faults on. No, Sephiroth considered himself a cause-and-effect man. You did A, then B would follow. None of this chance-encounter bullshit.

But still . . . but still . . .

He felt watched, nervous, feeling as if the collective eyes of the world were upon him, judging, criticizing, _Creeping__ up the stairs in the dark_, he was, he was just

_Waiting for the death blow_

_Waiting for the death blow_

_Waiting for the death blow_

But he was upstairs already, and no deaths had occurred. But so much death had indeed occurred, so many years ago, and he'd been the one dealing it, more often than not. Again, that flash of one he'd loved when younger, years and years and years ago, when the war with Wutai was going on strong, but before he'd been sent to it, "_Stroking your hair as the patriots are shot__, f__ighting for freedom on television_" He'd muttered, "_Sharing the world with slaughtered pigs_" and he'd looked at her, looked at her and asked, _"__Have we got everything?__"_and he remembered, it was life a knife through him, his own Masamune blade, how she'd looked at him then, how she reacted._"__She struggles to get away . . .__"_

And then, the war. The butchered villagers, ignorant people who fought not for political tendencies, but for their ideology, their sense that their freedoms were being squandered away, and for what, for those shiny orbs that enabled the user to cast elements at one another, hurl spells to manipulate, to summon world monsters to do your bidding, and that was the reason the war was fought, he thought, but if he'd been doing the right thing, then why, why did he keep seeing the people he'd killed? He didn't see them individually, but saw them represented in one victim.

His first true victim,

_The pain_, in his soul, in his body, _a__nd the creeping feeling_ he initially had when he first walked into that house, a house who'd been supposedly harboring those goddamned guerrillas that wiped out dozens of MPs. And a man had run at him, a short sword and a battle-yell in the dark hut, and after he'd been killed, Sephiroth had turned around, adrenaline sharpening his already keen senses so that he knew there was someone behind him, and he turned and saw

_A little black haired girl_, a girl who could have been just _w__aiting for Saturday_ but he'd killed her father, he'd killed him, and the girl begins to scream, loud shrieks, screeching, _t__he death of her father pushing her_, just as he pushed her when she ran at him, taking the sword from her dead father's hand, like a black-haired girl from Nibelheim did, once he tried to set his mother free and got rid of the first of the traitors, that goddamn village of Nibelheim where the basic truths of his existence had lain hidden in shadows and cobwebs, and Zack, goddamn Zack, the man he'd thought of as the closest thing to a friend he might have had (a hundred years ago, it seemed today), but in the end, it didn't matter.

Back to the memory of the girl in Wutai, but his memory was unfocused, her face superimposing itself over the face of the girl he'd slashed at in the reactor until he didn't know which was which, where was Wutai and where was the mountain village. What he did know was that he hadn't wanted to hurt the girl, not really, he only deflected the attack, pushed her away from himself, _Pushing her white face into the mirror_, but it hadn't been enough, and the girl, still screaming, still cursing at him in a foreign, alien language, had taken a broken shard of glass and stabbed herself in the neck, tearing skin and flesh, and for just one brief second, Sephiroth could see the tendons in there, but then there was the hot arterial spray slapping against his face.

_Aching inside me_

_And turn me round _

_Just like the old days_ when he'd laughed. _Just like the old days _when he'd shared with others. _Just like the old days_ when he still knew how to smile and mean it, _Just__ like the old days_

One hundred years and counting.

But then, it was done. He'd found himself in Midgar, in the Tower, and while he was confused at first, now he knew what to do, the sweet voice of his mother offering advice and comfort, and finally it was done, he'd stabbed his sword through the old man's back, pinning him to his desk,

_Caressing an old man_

_And painting a lifeless face_

_Just a piece of new meat in a clean room_

The sparkling-clean office, the polished desk from which had issued war, famine, martial law meted out with an iron fist, harsh discipline to all the subordinates, no less his own son as well, and at least there'd be one person glad for the old man's demise, right? Everyone knew Rufus ShinRa hated his father. And again the war, the accursed war that still haunted him, that he couldn't get away from, even in the ShinRa stronghold, because two of the Turks were from that accursed country. They had the same dark, slanted eyes, the same cunning language nobody understood, the foreign, foul-smelling foods, the unmistakable yellowish tinge on their skins, yellow like the sickly moon over Midgar, and hadn't one of those Turks been in a guerrilla? Those mountain savages that were at first merely annoying, but later on became actually alarming? Hadn't that yellow-skinned, slanty-eyed whore killed several of his men? And where was she now? Was she moldering in a shallow grave, her bones picked apart by the wild animals? NO! She was a Turk! A goddamn TURK, and oh, how that rankled him, how it made him feel the injustices of the world thrown up in dark relief, much more so when he knew what was in those books, those books that said so much about everything, about nothing at all.

But it didn't matter now. He still remembered the war. In fact, it was always going on; it had never truly stopped for him. "_The soldiers close in under a yellow moon_" it frightened him, it haunted him, the war, despite his cold demeanor, his quiet attitude, and wasn't that what he was about to erase from the world? His objective was clear. Find the Black Materia, wherever it was, and use it to deliver the world from the wandering, whining maggots who thought they had the run of things, but in reality all they did was scratch and bite and tear at each other, never fixing things, only making them worse. "_All shadows and deliverance_ _u__nder a black flag_ . . ."

_A hundred years of blood_, that was what the Wutaians called the war, because even though it only lasted a few short years to the rest of the world, to them and to ShinRa Company who'd been involved, it felt like a century-long conflict, as the effects were long-lasting. _Crimson_ the blood from his victims, from the monsters he was sent after, from the human monsters he'd contended with, and he hated this life he led, hated it all the more for what was revealed in those books, saw all the years he'd spent humoring the lying sons of bitches, and his vision was red as well, in his fury of his humiliation, his rage at the world who'd never let him be a part of it, that had essentially shunned him aside as a freak, as an exception to what was normal and acceptable.

_The ribbon tightens round my throat_

_I open my mouth_

_And my head bursts open_

_A sound like a tiger thrashing in the water__, t__hrashing in the water_, and Oh God this was madness, this was what madness sounded like! The insane shrieking in his mind, the steady drone he heard in the back of his head. He'd thought he'd surely die, falling into the Mako like he did, back in Nibelheim, but then he'd been here, he'd just been in Midgar, and saw that many years had gone by, although he had no idea what had happened to him those years, they were missing in his mind, in his life, but he had a purpose, didn't he? A voice, a noise in his head, telling him the next step, the step after that, never giving him the whole picture, which normally would've angered him, but this was the voice of his mother, and one always had to listen to Mother, did they not?

"_Over and over__, w__e die one after the other_", because it seemed an endless cycle of death and rebirth, only to die again."_Over and over__, w__e die one after the other_, the girl in Wutai. "_One after the other_", the girl in Nibelheim. "_One after the __other_", SOLDIER First Class, Zack Fair. "_One after the other_", Nibelheim villagers who'd kept the truth from him. "_One after the other_", the carcass of Old Man ShinRa, and let them all rot in Hell.

_It feels like a hundred years_

_A hundred years_ of lies

_A hundred years_of deceit

_A hundred years_ of injustice

_A hundred years_, but it was about to end.

_One hundred __years_, and he'd be the one to see the bastards in their graves.

* * *

A/N : Sephiroth is a weird little man . . .

Some inspiration from this is just my being fed up with the big agenda some of us are expected to follow, regardless of our individual wishes, and part of it is just how I sympathized with Sephiroth, on some level. The alienation, the feeling that truths, basic truths are being hidden from us, we've all felt something like this. And finally, I just really wanted to explore a deep, dark psyche I've never explored before. I liked how it came out, but you be the judges of that. Like I said above, it's funny how a story can take over your life, and instead take a life of its own. Moving in directions you didn't really intend, directions that might anger and hurt the one writing it. _Hint_: Something awful is about to happen in DCiS soon, maybe three or four chapters after where I'm stuck in right now, and I'm procrastinating on getting those hatemails.

Gimme reviews. Anything will do, except flames!


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